CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — New research has cast doubt on the long-held assumption about what happens to the millions of Neopets whose owners meet a romantic partner, begin working and paying taxes, or simply get bored.
“A Neopet cannot die, at least not in the traditional sense,” said Jeffery Quinn, professor of metaphysics at Harvard University. “As beings who exist only when observed by their owners in the digital ether, an abandoned Neopet is neither dead nor alive, but rather permanently suspended in a sort of limbo between these two states of being. They simply cease to be.”
Malcolm Branson was an avid Neopets player until he stumbled onto a picture of boobs on the internet in ninth grade and lost interest in the virtual pet site.
“Yeah, I saw a boob and thought, man, what am I doing on Neopets, so I kinda just lost interest,” said Branson. “Since then, I’ve wondered what happened to my first Neopet. He was a Darigan Draik named Dragondragon61892. I always thought that he probably died, so I was relieved when Dr. Quinn said that Neopets can’t die. But that stuff about being suspended in the bardo between life and death for all of eternity seems kind of messed up.”
Quinn’s thesis was not without controversy.
“It’s really too soon to be making these kinds of proclamations,” said Linda Conrad, a neuroscientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. “I’m currently on a team that’s studying the processes the brain goes through as it dies, and it seems much more likely to me that an abandoned Neopet actually experiences an eternal dream in which they are forced to relive the confines of their experience over and over until the heat-death of the universe. That may seem a minor, semantic difference from Dr. Quinn’s findings, but we’re talking about the ontological status of digital beings. This is an ongoing debate.”
At press time, Branson wondered aloud whether Neopets might prefer being dead after being locked out of his account for failing to guess his password five times in a row.
SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. — Renowned intellectual and brave culture warrior Dr. Jordan Peterson began sobbing uncontrollably when confronted by the question, “Did you get all that?” by the Great Owl during a recent trip to Lake Hylia.
Dr. Peterson took to social media to defend his tearful response to the seemingly benign question.
“I’ve heard it said that this so-called ‘Great Owl’ is the reincarnation of the ancient Sage Rauru,” Dr. Peterson said. “But I’ll say this much: if he is who they say he is, then the standard of what qualifies one as a Sage in Hyrule explains why we are a culture in decay. Young Hyrulian men deserve a better guardian than this dagger-browed strigiform. I’ll not contract myself to some Faustian bargain with a bird of prey in exchange for telling me what any damn fool could see. I could see the castle on the horizon, why do I need this loquacious fiend to give instruction then have the gall, the absolute nerve to ask if I had ‘got all that’. Yes, I bloody got all that. Do you take me to be such a simpleton as to not be able to follow basic instruction? The coddling of the Hyrulian mind will in the end prove a much stronger threat than whatever performative hysterics the left comes up with about Ganondorf, who is a man in the truest sense of the word.”
Kaepora Gaebora, also known as The Great Owl, said he meant no offense to the unsettled doctor.
“I offer guidance to all would-be heroes traveling Hyrule,” Gaebora said. “When I saw Dr. Peterson approached with his head down and muttering to himself I thought he was just another adventurer who could use a gentle push in the right direction. I never, in my thousands of years of existence, ever encountered someone who reacted so viscerally to a simple question. His entire self-serious demeanor disintegrated the instant he interpreted what I was saying as some kind of insult to his intelligence. I’ve seen Like Likes with stronger backbones. Did you get all that?”
Dr. Peterson uploaded a video in response to Gaebora’s side of the story, appearing visibly shaken with tears streaming down his cheeks.
“And what would you know about backbones, eh?” Dr. Peterson asked between heaving sobs, “I weep for the young men of Hyrule when this is their example of leadership. That is who these tears are for. You are nothing more than a talking sign post with wings. And the direction you are telling us to go is directly toward oblivion and the ruination of Hyrulian culture. This is why you see more and more young men looking to Ganondorf; he offers solutions and not just warm platitudes and asinine lines of questioning. Go to Hell.”
At press time Dr. Peterson was undergoing an experimental procedure at the Lakeside Laboratory to treat his crippling blue potion addiction.
As long-time readers might’ve figured out from context, I play a lot of faux-retro first-person shooters. I find something oddly meditative about games that let me run around at a thousand miles an hour with 5 to 12 guns on my back while I reduce hordes of demons/undead/etc. to increasingly evocative stains on the floor.
(I refuse to call these games “boomer shooters.” I’ve seen what boomers will play if left to their own devices. It’s puzzles, golf, and anything that takes a sober historic approach to World War II. Trying to teach someone in their 70s to circle-strafe runs the risk of firing all their neurons at once. I know “boomer shooter” is sort of fun to say out loud, but it’s never been an accurate term.)
I was going to write about something else this week, but then Project Warlock II left Steam Early Access. I’d really enjoyed the original Project Warlock, a game that is not afraid to allow you to be stupidly overpowered, so I had high hopes for its sequel.
Thankfully, it’s met my expectations. I’ve only cleared the first of PW2’sthree episodes at time of writing, but so far, PW2 doesn’t fix what wasn’t broken. It gives you an arsenal of powerful tools, then gradually unlocks an upgrade system that adds more options and bonuses. You start each episode in PW2 as a competent fighter and end it as a walking apocalypse.
In retrospect, that same upgrade system is what really won me over about the first PW. One of my biggest pet peeves about modern video games is how many of them use their skill system to deliberately gate off vital parts of their combat, so it takes a couple of hours before their systems actually work as intended. Doom Eternal was particularly obnoxious about this.
In PW and PW2, your upgrades are there to add custom options to what’s already a perfectly solid arsenal. You can turn your basic double-barreled shotgun into an automatic with a drum magazine or a quad-barrel, or switch your magic staff into a frost-empowered laser that can stunlock an entire room full of enemies. It’s primarily about what kind of destruction you’d prefer to inflict.
Project Warlock ended on a down note. The title character invaded Hell on a mission to destroy evil, as one does, then abruptly decided to take the throne. PW2 picks up immediately afterward, as the corrupted Warlock sends his new demonic legions after his 3 former apprentices.
My first impression of PW2 was that it was the original game, but bigger. PW was lo-fi to the point of distraction, with a subdued color palette and a consistent feeling throughout most of the game like the ceiling of any given room was about an inch above your head. PW2 begins with you shooting your way out of a collapsing castle and continually widens its focus as you go, from a dying city to a series of alternate dimensions to outer space.
Even early in the game, you’re more than a match for almost any single enemy, as your default weapons are actually pretty good and headshots get a 150% damage multiplier. It’s easy to run around each level popping off demon skulls with your starting rifle or revolver. Then they get sick of you and send in a battalion, at which point PW2 often gets intense. It’s at its best when it’s at its most frantic, as three dozen enemies all open fire on you at once and you’re forced to pull out all the stops to stay alive.
If I’ve got one serious point of criticism, it’s that PW2 really wants you to dig through every single level for all the upgrade tokens you can find. It’s tempting to race through the game to keep your adrenaline up, but each stage is full of well-hidden power-ups, and you want to put some work into your arsenal along the way. It might work better if PW2 awarded its perk points based upon your score, or had more of them drop from minibosses, rather than replicating the old-school Doom secret hunts.
I’m also not entirely cool with the “secret cameos” in PW2, where you can regularly find the hidden corpses of protagonists from other indie shooters like Prodeus and Dusk. It’s like PW2 is implicitly saying its action is so intense that all the other shooter heroes are already dead, which can’t help but remind me of the weird bravado of ‘90s magazine ads.
Those are fairly minor points, however. I’ve got a strong bias here, but Project Warlock II is a well-honed, intense example of its formula. It is a game about giving you multiple satisfying ways to shred demons into stew meat, and it delivers. I have no idea how fun it would be for someone who did not grow up on Doom and its various clones/successors, but it gave me everything I wanted from it.
[Project Warlock II, developed by Buckshot Software and published by RetroVibe, is now available for PC via Steam for $16.99. This column was written using a Steam copy of the game purchased by Hard Drive.]
On May 24th, 2025, we lost one of our most insightful, trenchant writers of genre books and comics Peter David. Peter David isn’t a name that you’ll necessarily think of when you think of “comic book writers who changed the medium.” Firstly, it’s very ordinary: it’s two plain first names. Grant Morrison, Dwayne McDuffie, Chris Claremont, Gail Simone, Christopher Priest, G. Willow Wilson, the list goes on and on of people with recognizable names that mark their incredible work and make them instant topics of discussion. But with a name like Peter David, he might as well be your city’s comptroller or the accountant whose jokes you pretend to laugh at during tax time so you stay on his good side. But if you’ve been reading comics for long enough, you’re going to encounter his name and that’s particularly true if you’ve been reading superhero comics of the Mighty Marvel variety. X-Factor is a team of street-level mutant heroes that David essentially brought together and shepherded through some of the best, most overlooked, compelling drama I have ever encountered in mainstream books anywhere. Do yourself a favor: if you don’t want to read the 100 issues leading up to it, check out what happens when Jaime Madrox holds his baby with Theresea Cassidy for the first time. Have you stopped screaming yet? Welcome back, and don’t worry! We’re talking about The Incredible Hulk: Future Imperfect!
Before he was rewriting the book on what “street-level” mutant stories had to be about, though, he tackled Marvel’s biggest, greenest problem. I mean hero. He is quite a problem for a lot of writers, and even more readers, Hulk often struggles to have an ongoing book that doesn’t get handed off to another hero, and has for a long time. A lot of readers have similar problems to him that they do with Superman: the perception that the Hulk is just kinda boring when the truth is: he requires a more deft touch than his “SMASH” persona would seem to indicate. He gets stronger as he gets more angry, and while that limit can be interestingly tested, it can really only be pushed so far without really putting your back into it, creatively. If you’ve read enough Hulk books at random, that’s quite clear: they mostly run the gamut from “good” to “forgettable.” His problem is a simple one, but it’s also fundamental to his character: he’s too strong for anyone to be a credible threat to him. Yes, he tells you that on every page, but it’s a problem that doesn’t exactly go away the more he’s written and the more power creep starts to take hold. If anything, he becomes a bigger problem. It’s like some kind of Metaphor or something! His biggest problem, from a creative standpoint, is finding or inventing a villain cool and credible enough to stand toe-to-toe and really make the reader wonder: how’s Hulk gonna get outta THIS one? Better buy the next issue and find out what happens when Leader and MODOK team up!
“Another Hulk” is both the least and most interesting answer to the question of a credible threat, of course, it all depends on how much creativity the writers and artists have, and how much the editors and, of course, the ever-watchful but incredibly uncreative censors and advertisers are willing to allow for. Because Peter David’s run on The Incredible Hulk, from start to stop, is all about the type of introspection and philosophizing that Ang Lee thought mainstream audiences were ready for when his Hulk movie was more about Banner than what he could smash. And nowhere is that more typified than David’s legendary story Future Imperfect. A story within the main run on The Incredible Hulk told over two oversized issues, making it about as long as The Dark Phoenix Saga. Yet talked about 7% as much, which I find baffling. Both books took place in the mainline run of their characters, Future Imperfect is technically set between Incredible Hulk issues #413 and #414, but is considered a canon part of that run. Yet it feels like a book where anything can happen. Where Banner’s back is pushed against the wall like never before, and the question of whether or not he returns is a constant refrain. It takes place in the place between the panels: where the real stories are told.
It’s a story of Dystopia, one of the last remaining cities after a third world war ruined the world over a hundred years ago. I hear you asking: why didn’t the superheroes stop it? They tried. Humanity’s nuclear arsenal put a stop to their ‘do-gooding,’ as well as the villains’ more cartoonishly fun attempts to counter it, with a quickness because, as is stated in the book: nuclear war doesn’t look like what we think it does. It’s just people dying by the billions. This is similar to the point made in Garth Ennis and Richard Corben in the intensely hopeless, nihilistic, and dour Punisher: End, but that story had the benefit of being a What-If…? story in everything but name and marketing. Future Imperfect had the impossible task of continuing the main Hulk book after it was over, they couldn’t just say “everything sucks and now our protag is dead because fuck you and everyone else, that’s why.”
If this all sounds a bit on the grimdark side, that’s the beauty of Future Imperfect: by having the late-great George Perez to do the linework, with Tom Smith on colors, Joe Rosen on lettering, and stand-out covers by Dale Keown, the book maintains an almost manic tone of horrific and casual violence and graphic imagery coupled with a bright, cheery ’70s sci-fi aesthetic that makes the whole world feel justified. It feels like something is trying to distract you in every page and on every panel because in Dystopia: life is fast, cheap, and impossibly hard, but people are still desperately trying to enjoy themselves.
George Perez, for those who want to save a quick search, is known for his attention to microscopic detail on massive projects and doing the linework of some of the most legendary imagery of any period for mainstream comic books, including Crisis on Infinite Earths, Infinity Gauntlet, and some of the most famous covers you’ve definitely seen in the background of any movie or show that actually cares about getting comics imagery exactly right. This team, with David at the writer’s desk, constructed a world in a single two-page splash that was credible, bombastic, and enormously iconic without resorting to a bleak, dull color palette with walls of overwrought narration to communicate how bad things have gotten without doing the legwork.
Dystopia is a miserable place, but if you just look at the gorgeous art without really reading the incredible dialog, it might not seem so. It’s bright, it’s smooth, there are barely-clothed sex-workers mingling with cybernetic citizens all looking distinctly Greek or Roman without directly referencing those empires. It’s filled with a vast array of diverse, strange, wonderful people, but they’re all stressed and miserable. They’re all crammed into a massive mono-city (or Megacity, the Judge Dredd inspiration is self-evident and perfectly channeled) and they know they can’t leave because the outside is an irradiated wasteland. Only the Maestro, the feared dictator of Dystopia, and his radiation shield can keep this huddled remnant of humanity safe. And Maestro, like all tin-pot dictators, cares far more for his own pleasure and enjoyment than that of his people’s welfare.
Bruce Banner, in his Professor Hulk years, emerges into this city from a pile of rubble. Instantly, the people give him a wide berth, not just because he’s eight feet tall and built like a brick that’s also eight feet tall, but because he looks like The Maestro. He isn’t him, clearly, there are too many differences that are readily apparent. But considering the fact that we soon see Banner set upon by the authorities, and that those signs about Maestro watching you aren’t just propaganda, it’s clear that no one thinks he actually IS the dictator. Hulk smashes through the ruling authority’s cybernetically enhanced supercops, and that’s when he draws the attention of the big man himself.
This is all so that when you first see Maestro, a hulking green brute with an overgrown beard and massive mane of hair around a prominent bald spot, body adorned with jewels, robes, and other ostentatious finery, you might not immediately notice the fact that he is clearly the Hulk. Or maybe he’s A Hulk, remember: there’s more than one as well as several “spin-off” gamma-fueled powerhouses. Hey, maybe someone out there really DID think Maestro was some kind of overpowered Doc Samson that had enough of listening to everyone’s problems, and decided to solve them all at once. The fact that Maestro is a gamma-powered villain is obvious, the fact that he’s Bruce Banner doesn’t come out until the end of issue #1. Cards on the table: I have no idea if this was a great twist in 1992. It’s not shocking now, I’ll say that, but it’s well-executed so “shock” matters a lot less. I could go back and read reviews at the time, but critics are paid to look deeper into what we’re criticizing, so I wouldn’t be surprised if they “saw the twist coming,” because they were expecting a twist. But while that’s not a bad thing on its face, it certainly wasn’t a surprise in 2005, when I first read Future Imperfect, but it was still a great reveal, because it’s so satisfying. A twist only matters if the build was good enough, and Peter David, George Perez, Tom Smith, Joe Rosen, and Dale Keown constructed one helluva build.
Without going over every page, I could but 10,000 words is a bit of a tough sell these days, Banner gets recruited quickly by the resistance group that brought him forward in time. Because there were no heroes nor other villains left to oppose Maestro’s brutal, fascistic rule, they had to get very, very creative to finally take a run at the king and not miss. And the only thing, they reasoned, that could stop Maestro was Bruce Banner, the Hulk, the original, no substitutes. The first fight between the two is vicious, brutal, and hard-hitting. Hulk really only loses because he places the lives of the civilians around him above his own, because he’s a hero. The dialog Peter David writes for him is perfect, making him seem detached and jaded, unimpressed by the world around him because of his dizzying intellect and impossible strength. But the moment “puny humans” are in-danger, he disregards his own safety, and the fight he’s currently winning, to save them. He doesn’t have all the answers immediately. He doesn’t pick up a gadget or a gun and use it to shoot enough people that he can save the civilians trapped under a crushed building. The Hulk does what a real hero in that situation does: punch Maestro RIGHT in the balls and start working on clearing rubble as fast as he can.
That right there is why you trust your art team. Linework, color, lettering: all perfect. And all something that even the readers can relate to, despite the planet-breaking strength of both men. Far too often, superheroes and good-guys are written to be rubes, so the villains don’t have to try as hard to outsmart them with blunt cruelty. Banner uppercutting Maestro in the dick is a perfect moment because it’s hilarious on the page, it’s brutal to think about, and it’s the smartest move if he wanted to disable the green dictator for as long as he could so he could try and help as many people as possible. Of course, Banner’s great “weakness,” his empathy, distracts him and Maestro gets the upper-hand, snapping his neck in short order. Which does not kill him. Exactly as the degenerate tactician planned. Because Maestro isn’t just a jumped-up cokehead born into opulent wealth and with political aspirations where the love of a family and friends should be, he became a dictator through sheer force of isolation and a body that ate nuclear bombs for breakfast, lunch, dinner, and a midnight snack. To paraphrase Joseph Conrad: ‘all you need to be a conqueror is brute force, nothing to boast of, as your strength is only as a pure coincidence of the temporary weakness of others.’
Everyone else died. Hulk just-so-happened to live. Maestro doesn’t know if killing Banner outright would kill him as well, Banner IS his younger self, remember. Canonically, that is true in the world of The Incredible Hulk, both as a fictional setting, and real-world comic series. He assures him, though, that should Banner try again: he’ll take the chance on multiverse theory and a timeline that split the moment Banner arrived into a future he wasn’t supposed to be in. Maestro really has been planning on fighting a younger version of himself for decades, and so far, so good. Hulk is completely incapacitated, unable to move but still able to reason, speak, and function otherwise.
There’s a scene that’s hard to describe without going into graphic detail, but Maestro demonstrates his power over Banner through a means you will not see coming with forty guesses, but it’s done well and executed tastefully enough that it passed the muster of 1992’s much further-reaching, and far more overt, censorship. It amazed me that this book came out in 1992, yet wasn’t talked about anywhere near as much in the mainstream comics discourse as Watchmen or DKR, both of which were from the ’80s. There are incredibly broad, thematic details that owe a lot to those books, and their success likely meant the team had far greater creative freedom for the team on Future Imperfect, but the book stands on its own perfectly fine. Yet despite being every bit as good as both those books, I would put it against any two issues of Watchmen or DKR and say it competes, it’s often just known as “the first appearance of Maestro,” who is an immaculately designed and realized villain, and is little more than a comics-themed pub quiz answer. And the funny thing is: if you go back and read a lot of comics from that time, there are plenty that really are amazing, groundbreaking, and stand the test of time. They’re just not as flashy and as transgressive as those two books were almost a decade earlier. Future Imperfect is violent, bleak, sexy, frightening, and it’s got a lot to say about too much power used irresponsibly, despite not once featuring Uncle Ben.
I’m not going to talk about the rest of the comic, I normally wouldn’t worry about spoilers for something that came out over 30 years ago, but in the wake the news of Peter David’s tragic passing on May 24th, I think if this all sounds good to you: you should seriously go out and read it yourself. It’s available in numerous trade paperbacks, as well as Marvel’s own comics app. It’s incredibly accessible online or offline, is what I’m saying. And it’s only two oversized issues, it will take you less than an hour.
Peter David always thought twice when he was putting his back into writing. X-Factor was always “the also-ran” X-title in popular perception. It wasn’t as violent as X-Force, not as bizarre as X-Calibur, not as important or widely read as X-Men (with all 26 superlatives) but it was one of the most consistent. The book was rarely below a 7/10, writing-wise, and often hit moments and storylines that were easily 9-10. Art often varied, but that’s the reality of a monthly title that hit surprisingly few delays in its decade-plus-long run.
David also wrote numerous novels, including some of the most well-liked Star Trek novels as well as some X-Men and Spider-Man ones that I personally think are more interesting than they are actually great. I think those latter two really prove how critical art can be for these superhero books to not have to explain every little thing, moment, and instant of what’s going on, and that’s as much a failure of the medium of the novel as it is of Peter David’s abilities as a writer. His novels are worth reading if you’re already a fan of the source material, but it really is his work in comics where he shone the brightest.
And without him, we may have to grapple with just how accurate the title of this Hulk story is, because I’m afraid our future has gotten a little more imperfect now that he’s no longer able to influence or steer it actively. But as the book itself ultimately exists to illustrate: it’s a future that still has hope in the people that live in it. However hard their lives may be, however stressed and anxious they become, how little power they may have moment-to-moment to their job, their government, their peers: they endure. They learn. They create. The world of Future Imperfect, even outside Dystopia, is well-realized and beautifully nihilistic. There are little moments scattered throughout the book where you get a snapshot of what life is like in the rest of the world, even just in the surrounding few miles around the city, and it’s a world ruled by a singular monster who only cares about himself. He regards other people as tools to bring him even more pleasure, even more enjoyment, and when they don’t? He reaches out with his enormous green fist and crushes their skull. It’s easy for Maestro to be a dictator: he’s an immortal, indestructible behemoth with a century of survival tactics in his mind. But he failed, ultimately, because he couldn’t see a path where enough people would stand together to formulate a plan to topple his decades of rule in a few days. At its core: it’s a story of the weak many overcoming the powerful single. It’s about how no matter how rugged the individual sees himself as, he cannot endure without others propping him up and helping him, even if he himself denies their help exists.
He only wanted to break Banner’s neck to continue his plan, he missed the fist heading straight for his balls, and he paid the price in the end. Even when he thought it was a price worth paying, he still failed. Not because of Banner alone, but because of the people Banner aligned himself with. The people who brought him forward to this horrible time-and-place in a last-ditch effort to even begin rebuilding and making things better, rather than keeping them as they are for the comfort of the powerful and few, the friends and allies he encountered who told him how to overcome Maestro’s seemingly impossible strength and merciless, self-obsessed mind.
Peter David knew what he was writing, what he was doing, I think it’s evident from all his best work, and even his most middling. I think he absolutely knew when it was time to throw out a 7 because he had a deadline to meet and didn’t want to risk his career on a delay, but he also always knew when he had a 9 or a 10 up his sleeve. He’s prolific, and yet so far from mediocre, that the word tastes bitter being associated with him.
Peter David may have left an imperfect future for us all, but he left a really amazing guide to make it just a bit better. Rest in whatever way you wish, sir. Your work is not forgotten.
LITTLEROOT TOWN — A local child has been hospitalized after his special day was ruined by a swarm of middle-age Pokémon resellers lunging for the last 3 starters in town, our sources confirm.
“I was ready to enter into the wonderful world of Pokémon, but all that changed when the scalpers got in,” said Youngster Joey from the mouth hole of his full body cast. “Professor Birch warned me they’d be lurking in the tall grass, I never expected them to walk right through the front door.”
The incident, originally intended to be a private viewing, was instigated after word spread across the region about the presence of three exclusive shiny Pokémon—Mudkip, Treecko, and Torchic—in Littleroot Town.
“I was gonna give the kid a Pokémon, I really was, but when those scalpers got in and started outbidding each other… I couldn’t pass up some extra funds for my research,” said Birch, the Littleroot Lab Professor, as he polished his brand new PC. “It’s a shame what happened to that kid though, I guess 10 years old is too young for a magical world of Pokémon.”
Youngster Joey’s Mom, who was right next door when it happened, has called on local law enforcement to hold the money-hungry collectors accountable.
“They’re monsters, every last one of them,” she said to local reporters outside the hospital. “I hadn’t even given him his running shoes, I can’t help but think if I had he would’ve been able to get out of the way in time before he got Mufasa’d.”
Both law enforcement and the FCC have taken notice of the recent uptick in tramplings across the country, all being linked to exclusive Pokémon. Poké Mart has already limited the number of value-sized Pokémon boxes to two per customer, but that hasn’t stopped scalpers in the secondary from upselling anybody who wants to enter into the hobby.
At press time, the Pokémon Youngster Joey did end up receiving has been sent back from grading as a PSA 4 due to visible damage and stress.
GRAPEVINE, Texas — GameStop has officially opened new “Pre-Pre-Orders” for games that exist only in concept art, a spokesperson for the company confirmed.
“For years, we here at GameStop have been looking for new and innovative ways to get money out of our customers’ pockets, and into ours, as soon as possible”, said Sheila Vernick, GameStop’s head of sales. “In the video game industry today, there is often a multi-year window between when gamers see that first-look concept art for a new title, and when they can actually give us their money for that game, and we just want to relieve them of that burden as early on in the process as we can.”
Loyal GameStop customers were quick to share their excitement for the exclusive new program.
“It’s just nice to be able to lock in my interest in these games as early as possible”, said GameStop Pro Member Skyler Patterson. “I saw some concept art on a Blender forum for a no-budget open-world action-adventure puzzle shooter. It only had three views, but it looked great, so I went straight to GameStop and they let me pre-pre-order the game for eighty bucks. And in thirty-five years–or possibly never–when that game is finally released, I’m going to be one of the first to play.”
An anonymous local GameStop employee was happy to share with us an insider look on how this program operates store-to-store.
“Yeah there’s not really like a guide or anything that tells us how to price the pre-pre-orders, so I kind of wing it”, claimed the employee. “Usually people just come in and show me some stick figure drawing of Master Chief or a shitty 3D rendering of some knockoff Pikmin game they want to pre-pre-order, and I just use a random number generator to come up with the price. Corporate doesn’t really care as long as they’re giving us money.”
At press time, pre-pre-orders for Grand Theft Auto: Beantown have already sold out.
NEW YORK — The once amazing Spider-Man has reportedly started moonlighting as a salesman for multi-level marketing company and creator of Cutco Knives, Cutco Corporation.
Residents all over New York were shocked to find the web crawler knocking on their doors last week offering them a chance to sell knives with their very own starter kit.
“Freaking Spider-Man, at my door? It was a dream come true, and then the knives came out,” said Thomas Sterling, a New Yorker still trying to dissect his encounter with the web head. “No way his spider sense didn’t pick up on that scam. Someone must’ve scrambled his brains or something. Maybe the Green Goblin or that fish bowl guy erased his common sense or something.’
Daily Bugle Editor-in-Chief, J. Jonah Jameson is not surprised at all by Spider-Man’s new business ventures.
“Of course Spider-Man is an MLM Hun,” Jameson said before shouting at Bugle photographers and demanding photos of Spider-Man selling knives. “He’s probably also selling Mary Kay and Pampered Chef. His downline is probably filled with a who’s who of masked villains and human traffickers. He’s in cahoots with them all. As far as I’m concerned, if you buy a knife from that menace you should be tossed in the pen with him and all his masked buddies.”
During our investigation we caught up with Spider-Man to ask him about these allegations and why he’s found himself in the middle of a pyramid scheme.
“It’s not a pyramid scheme, you wise guy,” Spider-Man said before jumping off the wall and pulling out a pamphlet. “You see a set of knives, I see an opportunity for us all to rise up financially and be independent businessmen. Aren’t you tired of chasing the dollar? Don’t you want to be your own boss and cut your corporate shackles? You can, all you need is this Cutco sales starter kit, and it just so happens I can sell you one. Normal price is $1000, but since I like you, I’ll sell you this one for $500. So what do you say?”
At press time, Spider-Man had successfully added me to his growing downline which already included The Sinister Six, Venom, and Kraven The Hunter.
Unfortunately, not all of us had stable parental figures growing up. Or any figures, aside from the ones that talk to us daily inside our heads, telling us what we should be doing. And sometimes, they sound and, at worst, look suspiciously like your favorite video game characters. WHAT? Here’s top 10 videogame characters you should not be relating to, seriously dude just go to therapy.
10) Joel
Okay, so what do you do when you lose your daughter to mushroom zombies? You kill everyone, get yourself a replacement daughter, and end up getting killed trying to save her. Even though, on some level, you’re really trying to save the daughter you lost. Kinda fucked up? Yup. If Joel had gone to therapy immediately when the apocalypse started or even a few days before, maybe all that bloodshed could’ve been avoided.
9) Arthur Morgan
Hate to break it to you, but… there were probably healthier ways to make a living at the turn of the century than robbing banks. With a little therapy, the whole gang might’ve picked up some solid cognitive tools for emotional regulation and, you know, basic life management.
8) Stardew Valley Player
At first, it sounds like a dream. You inherit a little patch of land and become a farmer. How wholesome. Except… it’s not. Ever heard of OCD? With the right meds and some solid psychotherapy, you might finally be free from your compulsive need to plant seeds every single day.
7) Henry (Firewatch)
Ahh, breakups. The ultimate way to derail a somewhat balanced life. When you get out of a long-term relationship, the last thing you should do is run off to sit in a tower in the middle of nowhere watching for potential forest fires. Why are you trying to escape your problems when you should be facing them? Even the worst armchair therapist can tell you’re not okay.
6) Doom Guy
You’re on Mars and the gates of Hell have opened. There’s apparently no choice but to blast demons apart with a shotgun and a chainsaw. Sounds thrilling? If you said yes, you’re probably a trauma-ridden man possessed by toxic masculinity. I have news for you: there is no hellspawn living on Mars. There’s only you, antidepressants, and therapy.
5) Isaac Clarke
I get it, mining is tough work. You feel like you’re stuck in a hamster wheel with no way out. The mortgage is crushing you, the kids are screaming, and yeah, the deformed monsters in the corridors trying to rip your guts out aren’t helping. Maybe it’s time to walk into a doctor’s office and get that sick leave certificate? Wake up man! You’re not on some space station mining and fighting abominations. You’re Steve from Portland, and your inner life is a hollow black void.
4) Stanley
When it comes to hamster-wheel jobs, office work isn’t exactly an upgrade. The moment you start hearing a voice in your head that’s not yours and you can’t control it, it’s time to call emergency services immediately. Think of it this way: good mental health is the one ending no Stanley Parable player has ever found, but everyone secretly wants.
3) Link
Of course there’s a princess you have to save. That much is obvious. But what if you just… took off those green elf pajamas your mom probably made, put the wooden sword down on the floor, and calmly came with us? Everything’s going to be okay, there’s no danger here. Have you ever heard of electroconvulsive therapy?
2) Gordon Freeman
You think you’re finally free after taking down an entire occupying dictatorship with nothing but a crowbar. Maybe that feels like freedom for a moment. But the post-war trauma seeps into your dreams, and you wake up drenched in sweat, not knowing why. It’s time to put down the virtual crowbar and find real freedom within yourself. Only after therapy can you begin the path toward being a free man. Until then, you’re just Gordon.
The final installment of the iconic Mission Impossible franchise, appropriately titled The Final Reckoning, is in theaters now. Is Ethan Hunt’s last hurrah a worthy send off? Yes. Fantastic movie, 5 stars, 10/10, perfect no notes. Cinema is saved again.
Now that the review is out of the way, let’s talk about serious business. Tom Cruise, please put me on the coconut cake list. I love cake. I love coconut. I’ve never had a coconut cake but I bet I would love it. I bet I would love it just as much as you love movies. I know you’re reading this so don’t ghost me. You love movies too much not to read every review to make sure you succeeded in giving the audience the best possible time at the movies. You did by the way. Bravo. All the stunts were worth it.
You want to know what the greatest stunt would be though? The one stunt that would define your legacy as the greatest man to ever be great at everything. It would be sending your famous coconut cake to a nobody online satire writer. Think about it. What rich famous person has ever gone out of their way to give a complete nobody their world famous cake just because they asked? The answer is none. You would be the first and you would be celebrated beyond belief. People would say, “Hey that Tom Cruise is so amazing. He hangs off of airplanes for our enjoyment and sends his famous coconut cake to random comedy writers on the internet just because they asked. What an incredible man.”
Receiving this coconut cake is the greatest honor anyone can receive. I am humble enough to admit that I do not deserve to be bestowed such a gift but I want it and I need it. We’re not so different, you and I. You love making movies and I love watching them. We are two sides of the same coin. You love running in movies and I love watching you run in movies. I am no athlete, I am a mere writer but I once won my 5th grade tack and field by using your running form. Surely that makes me worthy of at least being considered to be added to the cake list.
Everything you do, you do it for us, the audience and we appreciate it. At least I do. If there are a billion Tom Cruise fans, I am one of them. If there are a million Tom Cruise fans, I am one of them. If there are a thousand Tom Cruise fans, I am one of them. If there are 100 Tom Cruise fans, I am one of them. If there is one Tom Cruise fan, it is me. If there are no Tom Cruise fans, it is because I am dead but I know deep in my heart you would never let me die. The Final Reckoning hammers home the fact that Ethan Hunt never let us down. I know you never let us down either Tom. Don’t start now. Put me on that cake list.
Overall, The Final Reckoning is an excellent action film and a fitting send off to an iconic franchise and to America’s greatest action hero. Don’t walk to see it, run. Run like Tom is no doubt running to add me to the coconut cake list. Seriously, please Tom, it’s all I want. I’ll even listen to a Scientology pitch if you want to give me one. Just please send me that cake.
Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning: ★★★★★
My Odds of Getting a Coconut Cake From Tom: ★★★★★★★★★★
Oh, you must think you’re pretty great, don’t you? The way you effortlessly played through “The Last of Us Part II” on Grounded mode in only 20 hours with your high-level combat, stealth and resource management skills. Your prowess with this game is certainly unmatched, and you’re the envy of all your friends. Well, we hate to burst your bubble, Mr. Big Shot, but you left a pretty wide trail of misery in your wake, and we’d be remiss to not call your attention to it, lest you find yourself able to sleep undisturbed tonight. As such, here are the top 5 dogs you heartlessly slaughtered during your playthrough.
Bella (Age 3)
This adorable girl loved to go on walks around her home stadium, play fetch with anyone who happened to be around her when she had her favorite tennis ball, and beg sweetly for a piece of jerky when her master Jayla would stop for a quick bite. She had the cutest eyes and gave her humans the most trusting, loving looks as they rubbed her belly (which Jayla hilariously referred to as “paying the toll” for having caught Bella’s attention.) That all came to a pretty abrupt halt, however, when you blew her head completely off with your pump shotgun while she was weeping over Jayla’s arrow-ridden corpse outside of an abandoned coffee shop. Great job with that. We’re all sooooo proud of you.
Crusher (Age 2.5)
Crusher was given his name ironically because he was such an unbelievable sweetheart. He had never even killed any Scars, and was taken out on patrol with the Washington Liberation Front (WLF) solely for his tracking capabilities. He almost certainly would not have killed you, either, and likely would have just barked to alert his humans of your presence. That didn’t matter to you, though, as you sneaked up behind him in the tall grass and jammed your knife into his neck. Did it, you callous ghoul? The worst thing is that you managed to escape that general area undetected, leaving Crusher’s corpse out in the open for his owner Karl to discover. Karl hasn’t been the same since, just so you know. Not like you’d care or anything.
Reggie (Age 5)
A molotov cocktail? Really? What the fuck is wrong with you? There was an old boxcar right behind you that you could’ve easily climbed to evade Reggie. Not only were your actions despicable, they were also wasteful. You know what? We’re starting to second-guess all that praise we heaped onto your video game playing in the introduction to this article. You’re as inept as you are cruel. Oh, and Reggie once saved a little girl’s life by barking to get her parents’ attention while she was choking on a pretzel. Have you ever done anything that noble and selfless? Of course you haven’t. You’re just a killing machine. Death follows you everywhere you go. That may be your gift, but it is also your curse.
Chuckie (Age 5)
Oh, you’re gonna LOVE this: Chuckie had a brother named Bucky who was back in the WLF headquarters the day you pumped Chuckie full of bullets from your silenced submachine gun, and guess what? Bucky died of sadness a week later after his brother failed to return from patrol. It was just like the end of that book “Where the Red Fern Grows,” which you probably delighted in reading as a child, you depraved monster. Tears are raining down on our keyboard as we type this, and what are you doing? Probably relaxing in your den with a self-satisfied smirk plastered on your loathsome face. You will be held accountable for your actions one day. We promise you that.
Stella (Age 8)
Three days. That’s how many days Stella had left until retirement. Three. Days. Her owner Jerry had already prepared a special cake made of peanut butter and pumpkin for the special occasion. Looks like Stella won’t get her cake, or the well-earned relaxation and time with her humans during her remaining years. What did she get instead? Care to answer? That’s right, she got a bullet to the head from your bolt-action rifle. At least it killed her instantly, so we can thank you for that. How very considerate of you. While on that thought, we guess we can thank you for killing Jerry, too, because he most assuredly would not have been able to go on without his best friend. It seems you’re nothing if not a completionist.
There you have it. We know trying to make you feel bad was an exercise in futility, because you would need to be a human being in order for that to work. Stay tuned for our upcoming article on all the beautiful beasts you murdered in Shadow of the Colossus.
